"OB! DO YOU KNOW THAT NAME? OB! OB! OB!"
"N-no," she sobbed, "I don't know it! Please don't hit me again!"
Ob's shoulders slumped. He turned to the others.
"She does not know of me. Does not know of us. None of them have so far.
We are forgotten among them. We are rumors, legends. Nothing more than fairy tales. We are what they used to make their children stay in bed at night. To entertain themselves with in television and film and literature."
He turned back to her.
"We are the Siqqusim, which means 'abominations that speak from the head' in the Hebrew language. You thought us mere spirits of the dead, but we are much more than that. The Sumerians and the Assyrians knew our true origin. Demons, your kind called us. Djinn. Monsters. We are the source of your legends-the reason you still fear the dark in this age of light. We existed long before Michael and Lucifer chose sides with their 'angels.' They were nothing more than inferior versions of us. We were banished long ago, banished to the Void by Him, the cruel one; the one your kind worships still. He lost favor with us, for he loved you better, his final creations."
One of Baker's organs fell out of the empty stomach cavity, dangling by a thread of gristle. Absentmindedly, Ob tore it away, gave it to another zombie to eat and then continued.
"Have you any idea how long we languished there? You cannot fathom it. The Void is cold, so very cold. It is not Heaven, and it is not Hell. It exists between them and does not exist at all. We dwelled there, trapped for eons with our brothers, the Elilum and Teraphim. He
sent us there! Banished us to the icy wastes. We watched while you scurried like ants, multiplying and breeding, basking in His frigid love. We waited, for we are patient. We lurked on the threshold, ever observant, waiting for the time of the Oberim, what you call 'the Rising.' The Oberim is the crossing of the border between this world and the Void, and your scientists finally provided us with the ability to do so. Their experiment opened the door, broke down the dimensional barriers. Finally, we are free to walk this earth again, as we did long ago, before your kind. It is the ultimate offense to Him-as your kind dies, we replace you here. We reside in your brain. We are the worm that burrows through his creations, these bags of blood and tissue, this ball of water and dirt! And He can do nothing about it, for it was wrought with your own hands. Your bodies belong to us! We control your flesh. We have been waiting a long time to inhabit you. Many of us are here, and many more await passage. For our number is greater than the stars! We are more than infinity! And He can only watch! Watch and weep!"
Snot ran down her face. "S-so, you're doing all of this just-just to g-get back at God?"
Ob sneered with Baker's lips.
"Indeed. That-and our own self-interest. We longed to be free of the Void, of course."
He paused in his thoughts while Lisa squirmed on the pole. The dead body of her companion started to move again. It looked at her and grinned.
Its fellow creatures began to loosen its bonds.
"Welcome, brother," Ob said.
"Thank you, lord. It is good to be free."
Ob turned back to her.
"So tell me, Lisa. If you'll pardon my melodrama, do you know who we are now? Have you gained an understanding? Did your elders teach you of these things in Sunday school?"
Her only response was a whimper. Ob flung his hands up in exasperation.
"I am attested to seventeen times in the Old Testament! Seventeen! I am Ob of the Obot! I lead the Siqqusim, just as Ab leads the Elilum and Api the Teraphim. Yidde-oni! I am Ob! He who speaks from the head!
Engastrimathos du aba paren tares!"
Cursing, he shoved the zombie with the knife out of the way. Lisa relaxed slightly against her bonds. Ob grabbed a pistol from one of the other zombies and shoved it between her breasts.
Lisa cringed.
"If you do not know of us, do not know of the Void, or of Heaven and Hell, then I will show it to you firsthand!"
She screamed.
"I told you to stop mooing, cow!"
He squeezed the trigger and then squeezed it again. And again. And again until it was empty. Only then did he let the weapon slide from his grasp. It clattered on the blacktop.
"Undo these bonds, so that the one who will soon inhabit her may be free."
He stalked away. Something ruptured inside him and dark, noxious fluid rushed from the open cavity in his abdomen, drenching his feet. Baker's body was disintegrating faster than he'd expected.
When the Rising first began, Ob's original host body had been a black Labrador named Sadie, owned by an elderly widow in Bodega Bay, California. Unable to lead the Siqqusim in such a limited form, he'd run amok, desperately seeking the body's destruction. He'd found it hours later at the hands of a fisherman who dispatched him with several shots to the head after Ob tore out the throats of his wife and children.
As leader of the Siqqusim, Ob returned to the realms of the living before his brethren. He liked to think of it as head-of-the-line privileges. He also reanimated quicker than the others, almost instantaneously. His second body belonged to a network systems analyst in Gardner, Illinois, and had served him well. The host had been in remarkable physical health and died of suffocation, leaving the body in good shape. Ob still regretted the loss of that one. It ended when a human set the entire town on fire. Ob became trapped in the inferno while crawling through a ventilation duct after some prey.
His third body was a homeless man in Coober Pedy, Australia. The man was already rotting before death claimed him. Ob only inhabited that shell for a day before a human snuck up from behind and drove a pickaxe through his brain.
His fourth had been the body of Dr. Timothy Powell, one of the men directly responsible for freeing his kind in the first place. That body had been dispatched during the recent battle. Now, here he stood, in the body of Powell's superior, Professor Baker. The almost contrived irony was not lost on the demon lord, and Ob wondered if some higher force had a hand in the fact that he'd taken possession of two of the men responsible for his release.
He searched through Baker's memories as if riffling through a filing cabinet. He saw the scientist's escape and flight, his capture by Schow's forces, and the interrogation that followed. He learned of Baker's other companions: Jim, the father searching for his son, and Martin, the elderly holy man.
These two, the father and the preacher, were not with them. They weren't among the zombies ordered to scavenge weapons and round up stray humans from the surrounding countryside. He hadn't seen them in the complex either. The possibility that two of his enemy's companions might have escaped gnawed at him. He didn't like loose ends, especially if it meant that they could warn others of his army's might.
He scanned the horizon. Could they still be out there, hiding in the night amongst the hills and trees? How delicious it would be-how poetic to destroy them while wearing the form of their friend.
Still, no matter. If they had survived, they were gone by now, hunted down and dead. Or dying. Humanity's time was over, its number finite.
The Siqqusim's numbers were not. And when this world held no more bodies for them-there were other worlds, a multitude of other living beings for them to violate. They would never go back to the Void, and eventually, they would have their revenge on He who had sent them there. Ob would lead the Siqqusim's corruption of the flesh. When the last bit of flesh had been conquered, his brother Ab would then be free to rally his own forces, the Elilum. They would proceed with the destruction of the planet's plant and insect life, possessing them in the same way that the Siqqusim did with flesh. Finally, when all life had been extinguished, they would depart for other planets, while their brother Api burned the planet to ashes with his fellow Teraphim.